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Review
'Remarkable...a rip-roaring adventure novel with a true depth of feeling'
(Stephen Amidon, Sunday Times )'A beautifully written, enthralling saga . . . a compelling novel' (James Urquhart, Independent )
'Gautreaux writes action-packed novels that stand out for the extraordinary calibre of their prose' (Andrew Rosenheim, The Times )
'Has the impact of a book twice its length . . . a dramatic, theatrical meditation on law and lawlessness' (Alan Warner, Guardian )
'Tim Gautreaux's redemptive novel is a joy to read' (Barclay McBain, Herald )
'Gautreaux brings a long-gone era to life in lush, fresh detail . . . this novel about the intricacies of the human heart has a great, beating one of its own. Life may be harsh and fleeting, but the missing are still missed.' (Heather Thompson, Sunday Telegraph )
'Tim Gautreaux has managed to write a fine novel about a child's abduction without making it too upsetting. This isn't to say that the book is lightweight; nor does it duck the fear and trauma of the events it narrates. It has all the insight and metaphors you could wish for, but you end up zipping through it . . . impressively thrilling, and pleasingly complete' (Tom Payne, Daily Telegraph )
'Gautreaux writes with sustained grace and creates memorable characters . . . What really sets THE MISSING apart, though, is his remarkable ability to realise the period . . . a rare and rather uncanny achievement: a novel about the South in the early Twenties that reads as though it was actually written there and then' (John Dugdale, Literary Review )
'Full of vivid evocations of the sights, sounds and smells of the South. As Simoneaux pursues his morally driven detective mission the scent of the steaming mud of the cypress swamps and the sound of 1920s New Orleans jazz rise off the page' (Claire Prentice, Scotsman )
Product Description
Louisiana is the setting for this riveting tale of a kidnapped child and the man on her trail - Sam Simoneaux, who feels honour-bound to help find her. Leaving his stalwart wife behind, he works his passage on a pleasure steamer up the Mississippi
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A superb novel, at least as good as Gautreaux's earlier work, "The Clearing". It begins with Sam Simoneaux, a Cajun, landing in France on Armistice Day, and his unit is assigned to clear unexploded ammo from 2 square miles of battlefield. They have no training, and they take casualties. One day they find an old French artillery piece, and they decide to fire it at a large pile of shells they've stacked up. Instead, they hit a house, killing all its occupants save for a young girl. Sam befriends her, but of course there is no way he can do much for her. There are tens of thousands of orphans all over France.
Soon, we find out why he took such an interest: his family were murdered in a revenge attack when he was six months old. His father had saved his life by throwing him into the iron stove just before he was killed, and his uncle found him the next day. Although his uncle and aunt proved loving and wise parents, and he never found out about his real parents until he was six or seven, he always knew that somehow he wasn't quite the same as the cousins he was raised to think of as brothers and sister.
The main story starts a few years after the war, when Sam is married and working as a floorwalker in a department store (which sounds exactly like one I worked for in Michigan in 1959!). He likes his job, and is looking forward to a promotion, when a young couple tell him their 3-year-old daughter, Lily, has gone missing. Sam starts looking right away, but fails to order the doors locked in time; when he finds the girl having her hair cut in a dressing room on the fourth floor, he is hit from behind and rendered unconscious. Four days later, when he recovers enough to go into work, he gets the sack. The owner of the store tells him he can have his job back if he finds the girl.
For most people, this wouldn't be sufficient motivation to leave one's loving wife without any money and embark on a year-long quest. He signs on as third mate on the Ambassador, a decrepit Mississippi stern-wheeler where Lily's parents work. Lily is a precocious singer, so the theory is that whoever stole her must have seen her on the boat. The Ambassador makes a lot of money offering romantic days and evenings afloat, introducing America to black musicians and New Orleans jazz. Patrons bring aboard moonshine, and one of Sam's first jobs is to ensure that all knives and guns are checked in before customers board. He is one of the crew members responsible for breaking up fights. But wherever they land, Sam gets ashore to find out if he can a lead on Lily.
That's enough to get you started. Buy the book--I'd be very surprised if you regretted it. I may be a bit biased--I grew up in Michigan, and the deep south has long been a source of endless fascination. There were still a few Civil War veterans alive when I was young. And for all the propaganda you get about the deep south, I fell in love with it when I got to know it. Gautreaux evoked my memories of hot summer nights before the days of air-conditioning--when you sat out on the porch in the dark, drinking lemonade and listening to the crickets. Although this will be lost on Britons, this is a wonderfully atmospheric book, and one which will register with musicians everywhere. But most of all, it's a superb novel about what it means to grow up without parents, and why families are so important. It's also a very wise novel about revenge--the surest way to compound an injury is to become obsessed with revenge.
Soon, we find out why he took such an interest: his family were murdered in a revenge attack when he was six months old. His father had saved his life by throwing him into the iron stove just before he was killed, and his uncle found him the next day. Although his uncle and aunt proved loving and wise parents, and he never found out about his real parents until he was six or seven, he always knew that somehow he wasn't quite the same as the cousins he was raised to think of as brothers and sister.
The main story starts a few years after the war, when Sam is married and working as a floorwalker in a department store (which sounds exactly like one I worked for in Michigan in 1959!). He likes his job, and is looking forward to a promotion, when a young couple tell him their 3-year-old daughter, Lily, has gone missing. Sam starts looking right away, but fails to order the doors locked in time; when he finds the girl having her hair cut in a dressing room on the fourth floor, he is hit from behind and rendered unconscious. Four days later, when he recovers enough to go into work, he gets the sack. The owner of the store tells him he can have his job back if he finds the girl.
For most people, this wouldn't be sufficient motivation to leave one's loving wife without any money and embark on a year-long quest. He signs on as third mate on the Ambassador, a decrepit Mississippi stern-wheeler where Lily's parents work. Lily is a precocious singer, so the theory is that whoever stole her must have seen her on the boat. The Ambassador makes a lot of money offering romantic days and evenings afloat, introducing America to black musicians and New Orleans jazz. Patrons bring aboard moonshine, and one of Sam's first jobs is to ensure that all knives and guns are checked in before customers board. He is one of the crew members responsible for breaking up fights. But wherever they land, Sam gets ashore to find out if he can a lead on Lily.
That's enough to get you started. Buy the book--I'd be very surprised if you regretted it. I may be a bit biased--I grew up in Michigan, and the deep south has long been a source of endless fascination. There were still a few Civil War veterans alive when I was young. And for all the propaganda you get about the deep south, I fell in love with it when I got to know it. Gautreaux evoked my memories of hot summer nights before the days of air-conditioning--when you sat out on the porch in the dark, drinking lemonade and listening to the crickets. Although this will be lost on Britons, this is a wonderfully atmospheric book, and one which will register with musicians everywhere. But most of all, it's a superb novel about what it means to grow up without parents, and why families are so important. It's also a very wise novel about revenge--the surest way to compound an injury is to become obsessed with revenge.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
My first, but certainly not my last Tim Gautreaux. This is story telling at its best. Set in prohibition Louisiana not long after WW 1, the main character Sam, home from war, takes a job on a rough, tough river boat plying the Mississippi as a pleasure steamer in an effort to find a little girl stolen from a New Orleans department store while he was on duty and therefor held responsible.If he finds her the miserable old b-----d who owns the store may reinstate him, but the real driving forces are his wartime experiences and the tragedies in his own life. He befriends the child's parents who scrape a living on board as entertainers and general dog's bodies. There is drinking and violence on the old tub "The Ambassador" and even more when he forages ashore for leads on the abducted child.Then just as you think that it is coasting along to comfortable ending a whole new detailed adventure emanates from one of the original themes and how well this sequence is written; it could stand alone as a first class short story. I, in fairness to potential readers, can not reveal any more of the principal plot nor of the secondary tales which unfold and absorbed my interest to the last page.
This is the Wild West set in the deep south. The characters good, bad ,weak, strong and in some cases downright, disgustingly evil are drawn in detail. The technical descriptions of the paddler, the music and life on and off the river are convincing and enlightening.
This is not the river of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. This is an altogether different scene. I would rank this with Larry McMurtry's best work, Pulitzer prise winner "Lonesome Dove", for raw frontier characters and a gripping yarn. I can not pay a higher compliment to a work of American fiction.
A 5 star must buy.
This is the Wild West set in the deep south. The characters good, bad ,weak, strong and in some cases downright, disgustingly evil are drawn in detail. The technical descriptions of the paddler, the music and life on and off the river are convincing and enlightening.
This is not the river of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. This is an altogether different scene. I would rank this with Larry McMurtry's best work, Pulitzer prise winner "Lonesome Dove", for raw frontier characters and a gripping yarn. I can not pay a higher compliment to a work of American fiction.
A 5 star must buy.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This story wonderfully evokes life just after the First World War in the Southern States of America. We meet Sam initially when he has signed up and been posted to France to fight, but fortunately for him, when he arrives the war is over and he is sent to clean up war-torn fields. The descriptions here beautifully illustrate the futility of war, and the awful experiences of those who were unlucky enough to have been caught up in any war. In particular, Sam would be just about the last person to be sent to fight as he is a true pacifist. We learn early on that he has been bought up by his uncle after the tragic murder of his family, but even so his uncle has instilled in him the values of humanity, and the pointlessness of revenge. I would consider Sam to be a pacifist, and definitely not a coward as others would try to make out. He is a good man, and as the story unfolds of the kidnap of the little girl and all the repercussions that follow he always tries to do the right thing. This does lead to a moral dilemma, where he makes a decision that is not his to make, which leads to major ramifications. In all that happens it is the power of the people who are missing that have so much effect on those who are there.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A highly original read
Do you want to take a trip aboard a pleasure steamer on the Mississippi in 1920s Louisiana? Do you want to meet the singers and musicians, the river pilots and the engineers who... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Alison McVey
Missing Consciences
Sam Simoneaux has a conscience. Enough to follow up when he thinks he might be responsible for some misfortune. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Grr
Writing at its very best!
This was my first Tim Gautreaux novel and I can honestly say that this was the best book I have read in a very long time. Read more
Published 19 months ago by A. D. Thorne
Perfect Pitch
This, Tim Gautreaux's third novel, takes everything that was great about his first two and adds more. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2010 by John Welsh
Problems with the plot
Tim Gautreaux yet again demonstrates a wonderful ability to evoke the mood of a by-gone era. His prose style, as ever, is highly readable. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2009 by D. P. Mankin
Mississipi in the twenties
Atmospheric evocation of life on the Mississipi for a small band of musicians. But the characters are cardboard thin and the plot meanders on and on ...like the river. Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2009 by Mrs. A. H. M. Curry
The Missing
Very Cold Mountain; entertaining, exciting and it introduced me to a world about which I knew nothing. A really good read
Published on 17 Jun 2009 by R. Coombe
The Missing
This was the third novel I have read by this author and, in my opinion, he goes from strength to strength.
That's not to say that the first was poor. Read more
That's not to say that the first was poor. Read more
Published on 10 Jun 2009 by Stephen Oakes
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